Qggl Privacy PolicyEffective January 1, 2016

Welcome, Qggl user! In this Privacy Policy, we’re going to use “we”, “us” and “our” to refer to Qggl, Inc., “Qggl” to refer to the services we provide and “you” and “your” to refer to you, the person using Qggl. “Content” has the meaning specified in our Terms of Service.

This policy does not apply to third party websites that we or our users link to -- as you’ll quickly notice when you use Qggl, our users can link to strange, interesting, boring or even terrible things on the Internet. We’re obviously not taking credit (or blame) for sites other than our own.

Qggl Links

Qggl lets you easily type fun and memorable links to searches for many different types of content. When you click on a Qggl link, we:

redirect you to an interstitial page in the qggl.co domain

(if you’re in the EU) ask your permission to set a cookie, if one is not set already

log your visit

display some social and statistical information about the link

allow you to stop a bit and participate in social media features around that link by voting on or commenting on links or other user’s comments

let you login or register using an email address or a third party authentication service like Facebook login

If you do nothing on the interstitial page, after a brief time we’ll redirect you to the search that matches your Qggl link (or you can hit Enter to speed up the redirection).

User Registration

When you register or log in for the first time using a third party service (such as Facebook Login), we’ll ask you to pick a username that will be associated with the links you visit and will be visible to other Qggl users. We’ll record the information that your third party authentication service provides us with (which is determined by your privacy settings with that provider).

Once you’re logged in as a user from a given machine, we’ll automatically associate all links you click on with your user account. You can review your link history, tell us what links you don’t want publicly associated with your account by logging in to Qggl and visiting this URL: [https://qggl.co/u/[your username]/links].

Social Linking

We track, rank and report on Qggl links to promote friendly competition in developing fun and interesting Qggl links. Each interstitial page for a unique Qggl link is a social media space devoted to that link, with a dedicated URL (e.g., https://qggl.co/q/inconceivable.defn.me). We also track how people share Qggl links on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

Public Profiles

Although public profiles currently only consist of your username and your top ranked links, we plan to expand this feature over time. You’ll be free to add or not add additional profile information and control whether it’s made public or not. We will not display your email address or real name in your profile without your specific, express consent.

Optional Browser Extensions

The particular results you get after following a Qggl link may be different than what other users see. Increasingly, web resources are customizing their search responses based on factors such as geography and past search results. Also, search results may change over time for other reasons.

To be able to track these differences and changes, and so that our users can easily share and discuss the results they get from using Qggl, we are developing optional web browser extensions for the major web browsers to automatically collect these results and associate them with your visits to Qggl links.

These extensions have their own privacy terms and conditions, but as a general matter we will not share the results from these extensions under your name unless you authorize it (either specifically or through a general setting in your Qggl profile). We may, however, share those results without explicitly linking them to you. If the results you get from a particular search inherently divulge private or inappropriate information, you can delete those results from Qggl through your profile.

Other Information We Collect

We receive an abundance of information from your web browser each time you connect to Qggl. This information includes:

Your IP address, from which we may be able to determine your approximate physical location

Device identifiers on mobile devices

The time and date of your request

Any cookies that we’ve set in your current browser, from which we may be able to determine your user ID

Where the link is coming from (the “referrer”)

The date and time of your request

The type of browser and operating system you use

The language and time zone you have configured for your computer

Any other headers your browser is configured to send us

For now, our practice is to keep all of this information indefinitely, linked to your persistent cookie and user ID, because we may find a way to use it to improve our product and your experience as a user.

Cookies

A cookie is a small data file sent to your browser from a web server and stored on your computer's hard drive. For instance, we set a cookie specific to you when you first visit our site, and then your browser sends us back that same cookie each time you visit a link to our site. This is how we know that you are the same person (or at least a person using the same web browser on the same machine) each time you visit, even if you do not have an account with Qggl.

Because our platform is intended to be fun, social and mildly competitive, we need to be able to attribute visits to particular users. None of our features other than mere redirection to your link will work if you will not accept cookies. Except in parts of the world where there are legal requirements to the contrary, we will always set a Qggl cookie if one is not already set. You may be able to configure your browser to reject such cookies, but it will significantly degrade your experience.

Third Party Advertising and Analytics Services

Third party advertisers and analytics providers who we work with may also set cookies on your browser when you visit our site, and they’ll get those cookies back when you visit again from the same browser and computer. Because they do this same thing with many sites, these third parties are able to link together your visits across those sites. Examples of these third parties are DoubleClick and Google Analytics. We also may partner with individual sites to use the aggregate information we collect to improve their services and offer more value to their users.

We do not, however, directly provide these third parties with any information about you. Working with these third parties does, however, enable us to get a better understanding of how you use our site and how to improve Qggl. It also helps those third parties show you more interesting advertisements and market to you more effectively (which in turn means that they pay us more for showing advertisements on our site). There are browser plugins that allow you to block or limit the use of these third party cookies, but using them undermines our ability to succeed as a company and provide you with a useful service.

Some of these third parties allow you to opt out from the different ways from how they collect and use your information or to refine your preferences. For instance, you can customize your advertising preferences with Google by visiting the Google Ad Settings page at: https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads

Behavioral Tracking and Do Not Track

We allow third parties to engage in behavioral tracking, and we ignore the “do not track” browser parameter. This is because the concerns over this practice are overblown, and it’s ultimately in everyone’s best interest for advertising-based services to provide advertising for products and services that people would actually like to buy.

Use of Email Address

We use your email address to send you:

legally required notices and email concerning the privacy, security and administration of your Qggl account (for instance, if you request a password change, if we need to send you a data security breach notification or if your account has been involved in a Terms of Service violation)

notifications that you configure Qggl to send you about your account status or the status of links you’ve claimed or follow

monthly news about Qggl, telling you about new features, new domains and searches and some of the fun and interesting things people have been doing with Qggl

It’s not possible for you to opt out entirely from the first type of email, although completely deleting your Qggl account will remove most of the need for these emails. You may independently opt out of the other two uses. In any of these cases, we may send you email in a way that alerts us or our third party email provider when you’ve opened it.

What Does Qggl Do With Your Information?

In addition to the specific uses we’ve already talked about, we use the information we collect from you to:

share your Content with other users in accordance with the preferences you’ve configured

provide you with personalized Qggl services by identifying patterns in your usage

complete transactions with you and respond to inquiries from you

tell all our users the fun things about that people are doing with Qggl

detect and prevent violations of our Terms of Service, fraud or security issues

Information about Children

Qggl does not knowingly collect or maintain information about anyone under the age of 13, and if we learn that any account has been created by someone under the age of 13 we will delete it. To learn more about the U.S. law that requires us to do this, see: coppa.qwik.it.

Business Transfers

If we sell Qggl -- either by selling the company itself or by selling its assets related to the Qggl service -- then we will also transfer all of the information we have collected to the acquirer. If that happens, the acquirer may continue to use your information in the way we’ve described in this policy.

Data Security

If you have a Qggl account, you are responsible for maintaining the security of your password and your logged in sessions. For instance, if you give someone your password or leave yourself logged in to a computer, and someone accesses your account, you will be responsible for what that person does with your account.

We host Qggl using reputable third party services (such as Google Cloud Platform) that list a broad array of certifications and claim to have complied with key industry guidelines for data security and protection. However, because we are a small company, we have no ability to independently verify those claims, and we will have little recourse if they turn out not to be true. We rely instead on the “social proof” of the many (much larger) companies that have trusted these same providers and the infrequency of our providers being found responsible for data security breaches.

We developed the Qggl service with substantial attention to application-level security. That said, it’s not possible at this point in history for anyone to (honestly) guarantee the security or integrity of the information they collect and make available over the Internet, as many far larger organizations have learned to their sorrow. In the event of a data security breach, we will promptly notify you and comply with all applicable laws.

See our Terms of Service for more details on how we limit our liability to you with respect to data security issues.

Changes to this Policy

We may amend this policy from time to time. If we make a material change to the information we collect or what we do with it, we will notify you by email (if we have a working email address for you) and through site notices. Continuing to use our service after receiving such a notice constitutes consent to the revised policy.

Questions

If you have any questions about this policy, please feel free to email us at legal@qggl.co.